


Torches

by radiobread



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Aftermath, Angst, Baby Hobbits, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, book universe? movie universe? that's for YOU to decide buddy, but sam/frodo is still my main b, rose is there because i love her, sad frodo, this is post relationship so like i promise you it's ABOUT them but y'know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-25
Updated: 2017-02-25
Packaged: 2018-09-26 19:36:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9919088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radiobread/pseuds/radiobread
Summary: Had he ever stolen the breath from Rosie's lungs and given her his own? Had ever he woken up early to heat a warming pan because he knew how cold her feet got in winter? Could she feel the sunshine just by smelling his hair? Did he kiss that spot right under her ear just to see her squirm? Did she know how lucky she was?(Or, Frodo holds baby Elanor and comes to a few conclusions.)





	

The last of the fearsome creatures that Frodo had faced was yet the smallest. The beast was called Elanor. Pink, wide eyed, and fattened by the generous love of her mother. She knew everyone. She feared nothing. And Frodo, a man of nine fingers and ninety more nightmares, feared her. She wept without shame. She smelled always of powdered arrowroot and warm milk. She seemed never to blink. She was perhaps the last of the beautiful things that he would ever see.

“Six times she’s fed herself this morning. It’s hardly elevenses.” Frodo heard her mother say from somewhere. Perhaps the kitchen. “And I do dare say fed  _ herself _ . Not as if I’ve had any say in when and where.”

He could not speak to that. Frodo dared not to even offer her a nod of approval. For what did he know of it? Perhaps he had been a babe once a very long time ago, but as innocence continued to leave him with every sick dream, he began to doubt that he had ever been anything more than a man in a chair. 

At the moment, Frodo could hardly recall the last time he'd been entrusted to hold an infant child, watched by the eagle eyes of a finicky parent or no. How long had it been? Ten years? Fifteen? Had he ever held a child at all before Elanor? But yes, he quietly wagered that he must have once or twice. While a particular instance of child holding hung in his mind, over some thought he had decided that the babe must have been a younger, and somewhat quieter version of Pippin, though not by much. Even then, Frodo himself had not been older by many leagues. It had certainly been a long time. As of late, Baggins men were finding a habit in celibacy. There hadn’t been the patter of little feet or the smashing of priceless relics for a long while.

Frodo looked away from her for a moment, and found that by the hands of a strange curse he was pulled back. No, he could not answer Rosie. He could not stand to entertain the voice of her thoughts with what little understanding he had of the world that her and Sam now shared. He could watch it. Touching it at times, with careful fingers, but never quite grasping it. Grasping it was something else entirely. 

“But listen to me. Shaming a hobbit for taking too much to eat.” Rosie clucked her tongue. 

Frodo could hear her busy feet pacing over the floor in the next room, hurrying to nowhere in particular like new mothers often do. What she was searching for, or in route to do, one could only try and guess. Six times she’d swept the same corner of the east hall, and Frodo, cross his heart, was certain there wasn’t so much as a crumb there to begin with. He wished that she’d sit down for a bit. Her incessant reign of fussing was giving him a nervous twitch. Or perhaps he’d already had that. He couldn’t tell anymore.

“I ought to be grateful!” She chirped, entirely unaware that she was carrying on a conversation with herself, and perhaps the walls if they were at all interested. “Her food is quite free, isn’t it? And there’s quite a bit of it to spare, I suppose. And I ain’t got to cook it, that’s for certain. Aye, I suppose I should be plenty grateful.”

“My Aunt Esmerelda used to maintain that mothers are required to be grateful for nothing more than the health of their children.” Frodo spoke up. “All else is grounds for complaint. Do with that information what you will.”

The child stirred some as she caught the sound of her mother joining into the parlour, but did not care to wake just yet. With her she brought an armful of dry kindling and a fat clay mug that was likelier to be filled with ale than with tea. He doubted very much that it was intended for him. She set down the items and laughed. It was big, and warm, and it was real. In their time together, there were corners of Frodo Baggins that had become Sam Gamgee. When the wife of his Sam laughed like she did, he felt those corners in him. And he felt them glow.

“All else is grounds for complaint.” She repeated, crouching over the fireplace to work the fire. “I like that!”

“I’m glad.” Said Frodo, and after that they did not open another conversation for quite some time. Nor did either of them suspect that they would.

Since Sam had left for a brief visit to his eldest brother, Frodo and Rosie had been living amongst a sort of tension that sometimes hung heavy enough in the air as to feel like a whole nother person in the room. Of course, one would be a fool to assume that it was anything less than innocent. Rose herself had not looked upon another man since Sam’s return to Hobbiton, and Frodo was too smart a hobbit to think that any woman left alone with a man is an opportunity. He had once looked upon her as an old and distant friend, and that had not changed. 

Still it was quiet here, in the absence of Sam, and they had exhausted their conversational topics thirty times over. One could only talk about mayoral duties and chick rearing so many times. They pretended to be content over tea and mostly one sided conversations. Beneath the surface they both awaited Sam’s return. As Frodo watched her fidget over household chores that happened suspiciously closed to the window, and held their new child in his arms, he felt foreign. A stranger taking polite shelter for the night, in his own home.

During this thought Elanor woke. At the realization that she was in the care of neither of her favorite people, she wailed not in fear, but discomfort. Frodo was not a stranger to her. After all she’d been born in his own home, and by that logic was an honorary Baggins, by Bilbo’s judgement. But Rosie wagered that maybe she could smell the fear in him, when he held her with such little confidence. Still he went stiff as she struggled in his grasp, just as she had the time before, and before that still.

“Time for another meal, maybe.” He mumbled, barely heard at all under cries that were becoming less agitated and more fearful as time went by without resolve. 

“I should think not!” Rose snorted, finally kindling a small, buttery flame. “She’s just eaten! Six meals before noon is excessive for even a hobbit. At _ seven  _ she’ll go and burst, and Sam and I will have to start from scratch. She couldn’t be hungry.”

Frodo had hoped that Elanor’s call of distress paired with his confusion would summon her to take over. She hiccuped for a moment before screaming at a new and improved volume that he hadn’t heard her reach before. He had been wrong, it seemed.

“In need of a change?” He asked as if Rose kept tabs on that matter at all times. Mostly she did, but right now seemed quite absorbed in other things.

“Could be!” She encouraged the idea, but did not budge from her busy little spot by the fireplace. “Give her a sniff.” And Frodo might have laughed in her face, had she been closer. 

“I’m sorry?” 

“A sniff.” She repeated. “Not like she’ll tell you herself whether or not you’re right.”

“What a queer thing to suggest, Rose Gamgee.” Frodo gave off a harmless scoff, now awkwardly attempting to shift poor Elanor further up into the crook of his arm. The attempt was futile, and his eyebrows knitted together in worry as she wiggled further off of him.

Rosie simply shrugged her shoulders, now spreading the flame to other scraps of wood with an old shred of parchment.

“Samwise does it.”

That was all need be said, and she knew it, that tricksy rascal of a woman. Of course Sam would do it.  _ Samwise the brave _ thought Frodo with the ghost of a smile playing shadows on his face before it fell away. Samwise the father, now. Samwise the husband, and hero, and legend. Around these parts he was just Sam. Frodo knew better. So did Rosie.

“She’s clean, I think.” Declared Frodo, after a careful and reserved sniff of the angry infant.

“Well, you’d know if she weren’t.” Said Rose. “So, good on you! These are the kinds of dragons you face, rearing little ones. Not quite as treacherous as what the likes of you has seen, just a great deal more unsavory. You’ll know of it someday when you’ve got your own.”

Frodo said nothing of that in return, and did not know whether or not he felt empty in not being able to extend the conversation on that topic. If there was some sadness in the doubt that he would ever see his own Bagginses running around these halls, it did not reach him. He did not feel any lesser over it. 

“Yes, of course.” He said, feeling as though he were reading a response from a book rather than drafting his own. The talk did not make him as uncomfortable as it did bore him. Frodo would have much rather liked to settle the issue with Elanor, which Rose was still counting on him figuring out for himself. She talked on while he struggled, sneakily phrasing her words as she did.

“Daisy is still not spoken for.” She threw out, quite suspiciously out of nowhere. “And cute as a bug’s ear, too. I’d bet you Sam would be right pleased in seeing his favorite sister go with someone so admirable, though I have  _ no _ idea who that could be.”

“Oh you’ve  _ no _ idea, is that it?” Frodo asked, now attempting to soothe the child by means of rocking (more of an understated bouncing, at that).

“None whatsoever.” She hummed. Rose finished up with the fire, and cleansed the soot from her pale hands with the cleanest end of a dirtied wet cloth as she stood to face him. “Though I have heard tell that her cooking is fit to rival my Sam’s, and that she’s  _ excellent _ with a trowel. Not that I know of anyone who’d be interested.”

“And perhaps you will. But later.” Said Frodo, who in honesty was only trying to elicit the response she wanted in order to get her over to him faster. “As of now, your daughter has quite had it with me, I think. She wants you.”

This did not do the trick, or even come close, as Frodo had hoped. Rose did not look convinced, but rather wore an expression of disappointment that was not feigned. It was the same expression that had tried, and failed to convince Sam to turn down the trip to crickhollow so long ago.  She gave a sort of sigh.

“No, she wants _ you _ .” She said, coming slowly to his side while Elanor looked up at her hopefully. “She just wants you right. She knows you’re fearful of her, Mr. Frodo, and she’s offended. She wants comfort, not to be pushed off right as soon as you tire of her.”

“I do not tire of her.” Frodo began to explain, a headache blossoming in the right side of his skull. “I could never.”

“Then you shall let her know of it.” Said Rose, calmly scooping up the screaming bundle like it was nothing at all. Frodo had only found relief for a second or two before she was set back down onto him, only different this time. Her head lay against his left shoulder, body across his chest. Rose took his arms and positioned them safely over her. For a minute or so she fought him, and no difference in her attitude was apparent.

“You need only stay calm, and she’ll do the same.” Whispered Rose. “Try it a little.”

This was not as easy in practice as it was in word. When one is told to do something, they will most often do the opposite. So of course he grew stiffer, and more frantic, and more certain that whatever he was doing was apt to scar her for the rest of her natural life. He wished in that moment for Sam. For Sam’s instruction, and Sam’s warm hand over his as he coddled his friend’s newest love. In a moment of bitterness he wished away Rosie, and in her place was his Sam. 

_ His _ Sam, not theirs. Safe, and sturdy, and there when the worst reared it’s ugly head. He would be smiling. He would always be smiling.

And then she stopped moving. Frodo panicked at first, but quieted up when Rosie shushed him with her finger. Elanor was asleep, and snoring the tiniest little tune as she did. He caressed a finger over the honeyed curls on her head, and a gasp caught in his throat. Without qualm, she was sleeping against his chest. Breathing, breathing, breathing. In, out, in, out. She was alive. The most alive thing he had ever seen. 

“There.” Said Rose, soft and rich in a whisper that had been gifted to her since her first moments as a mother. “ _ There  _ she is. She trusts you.”

“She’s just tired.”

“She _ loves _ you.” And there lay a quiet so immense that he felt it in his fingertips, and cheeks. “She loves you because Sam loves you.”

And when the quiet did not lift, but instead settled over like a layer of impenetrable ice over already weakened ground, Rosie knew that she should have kept that to herself. Mother left child in trusted hands, and went over to dust a spot on the mantel that dust had not so much as tickled since her move to Bag End. Frodo sat, and he watched over the most beautiful child he would ever see. Frodo sat, and he chewed at his tongue.

Frodo sat, and he wondered if she ever would have said that if she could have seen those lips upon his before they had  _ ever _ touched hers. 

And he wondered if they still tasted like warm honey and pipe tobacco. Like rosemary sprigs, like elderberry wine, like black ale, like the wind, like honeysuckle, like elven bread, like  _ him _ ?

Had he ever stolen the breath from her lungs and given her his own? Had ever he woken up early to heat a warming pan because he knew how cold her feet got in winter? Could she feel the sunshine just by smelling his hair? Did he kiss that spot right under her ear just to see her squirm? Did she know how lucky she was? 

And here. Here was their child, thought Frodo. Sweet, and blessed, and breathing, and their own. A living relic of their love. When Frodo looked down into her sleeping eyes, every question met it’s answer. Yes.

Sam loved Rosie very much. Sam loved Rosie like Frodo loved Sam.

“I’m so sorry.” He said, suddenly enough to shock even himself. “For keeping him from you. For putting him in needless danger while you only waited for letters that never came.”

Rosie did not turn, or even abandon the duties she had forced onto herself.

“I forgave you when you brought him home to me in once piece.”

He didn’t believe her. But knew that she was trying. She was trying for Sam, and she would likely never reach it, but her effort was enough and he would never ask more of her. He couldn’t.

“I could never ask that of you.” Said Frodo. Rosie turned her cheek and smiled at him.

“You didn’t have to.” 

He couldn’t hate her to save his life. Rosie gave Sam reason to wake. She knew every song in the history of the world, and she snorted when she laughed, and she always made sure to save him breakfast when he couldn’t quite make it out of bed in the morning. There was life in her where in Frodo there was cold air.

Rosie loved Sam, and Frodo loved her for it, but she was also good to Frodo himself. She would not forgive him for stealing Sam away because Frodo had not returned him in one piece, in truth. But she understood, and she had learned the way he had liked his tea, and she checked on him in the night sometimes just as Sam did. She accepted his presence. She knew but she did not ask.

“I often wonder,” She continued then, watching the fire as it grew and growled and spat. “Whether I keep you from him or whether you keep him from me.”

Elanor snatched up his pointer finger, the one that he still had, and she held it with her father’s strength. She promised in that, to never let it go for as long as she slept. Bilbo’s old grandfather clock ticked on as it would never cease to do. Sam’s love cleared her throat. These were the sounds of Sam’s new chapter. Frodo did not know whether or not he should be a part of it.

“I don’t know.” He said.  But he knew. And when she dared to look at him, Frodo smiled pure and true. Somehow in that, he had passed the torch to her, and she had taken it willingly. She had promised to keep it lit. And she would. He knew that she would.


End file.
